Wow mage gear
Still, there's a lesson to be learned here. First, the lure of the eternal demo and the cheap game is strong. My sample size of one person has yielded incontrovertible evidence of this promotion's effectiveness, I think we can all agree. And secondly, we don't want this presumed influx of new blood to just be rolling whatever they want, willy-nilly, without regard for the non-magey, potentially warlockian nature of their choices. We must educate them.
So this column's for you, person who is just now taking up the habit. You know something about the game, but most of your information comes from that one episode of South Park and the Mr. T ads. Your workable knowledge is limited at best. You rolled what looked fun on the character select screen, and now you're off and running through the wilds of Azeroth, killing plainstriders and wondering why only some of them seem to have beaks once you kill them, even though it's fairly clear when they are pecking you to death that all of them do indeed have beaks - razor-sharp, flesh-piercing beaks of fear.
The game seems fun, the quests are interesting, the rewards and levels come quickly enough to keep you motivated, the graphics are simplistic by today's standards but have a certain charm to them, and you think you might want to stick with the game. Only now that you've got your feet wet, you have the growing idea that you might want to start over. You know what you like about your first character and what you don't, and you think you're ready to hit the ground running with a new character, armed with the wisdom of experience. Now you're staring at that character creation screen wondering what to pick. Good news: Arcane Brilliance is here to help, with our handy, three-step character creation guide:
- Pick a race that can be a mage.
- Pick a mage.
- Click "create."
That's pretty much it for that guide. Now that you've made the correct choice, read on for Arcane Brilliance's other handy guide, this one with slightly more steps.
Beginner's guide to being a mage
Welcome to magehood! You have selected the game's best ranged damage-dealing class. By "best, " I don't necessarily mean "able to deal the most damage." I mean "best."
Reasons mages are the best:
- Our pants are a secret. We wear them, but most of the time we're wearing a robe that completely conceals them. We could have anything on under there. Or nothing. Mysterious.
- We get around. Seriously, I cannot overstate the value of portals. We eventually get the ability to teleport to any major city in the game, which comes in really handy all of the damn time. With other classes, you will sometimes find yourself waiting for a blimp. Or riding a horse into the city every time you need to learn a new ability. Or standing in one city, begging a mage to come port you to another city. Being able to transport yourself around instantly is a massive timesaver, make no mistake.
- We can wiggle our fingers and conjure delicious baked goods. We can also conjure type 2 diabetes. The two are completely unrelated.
- Pyroblast! Nothing - nothing - is as satisfying as hurling a fiery boulder at a warlock and watching that warlock explode into tiny, eyeliner-caked nuggets of failure.
There are, of course, many more reasons, but I have a guide to write and I keep eating up all the space available to me with odes to mage awesomeness. It's fun, but not especially useful. It's time to get down to business.
Choosing a race
The following races can be mages:
Yes, I used a bullet-point list for one item. I don't know what tauren did to deserve being left out of the mage party. They seem like such a nice, nature-loving race. My guess is an ancient, secret pact with Satan or Cthulhu or Deathwing or Megatron or something. It must have been something bad.
Whatever it was, I hope you didn't want to be a cow-person. Your remaining options are plentiful, though. So which race makes the best mage? The answer, actually, is "all of them."
Choosing a race is really an aesthetic choice. Which race do you like the looks of? Which starting area looks fun to you? Which race has a backstory and lore that intrigues you?
The actual impact of your choice on the potential of your mage is next to nothing. The only non-cosmetic differences between the races are the various racial abilities, which have little to no tangible effect on your potency at the end of the game.
So pick what you want, go forth, and have fun.
The first 10 levels
Your first few steps in the world as a mage can be frightening. You're wearing cloth armor (not so much "armor, " per se, as "a shirt"), waving a stick, and a bear is charging at you. Mages are fragile, delicate creatures, and we don't like to be hit.
The good news, though, is that you excel at killing things before they can get close enough to hit you. Even early on, your abilities are all geared toward striking at range, doing copious amounts of damage quickly, and keeping the enemy at bay as long as possible.
Use Fireball for your main damage-dealing spell, Frostbolt as your opener to slow the enemy down, and Fire Blast as your last-ditch, close range instant attack.